Bodyfat and Gymnastic progressions

[Amon Ra]

I'm on a phone so will be brief.

My progress through the kilroy template and btgb progressions has stalled for a while now. Life got in the way since 2013 unfortunately. I've been back training for five months.

For reference I can do 5x3 chins, a 10 second L sit, 5 pistols on each leg, and sets of 5 dips on parallel bars. My isometric training has gone nowhere, particularly the planche. My hespu is sporadic, between 1-2 reps.

I went to an Herbalife store and found that I'm at 22% body fat at 206#. Lean mass is roughly 160#. Im 6' 1". Btgb suggests leaning down.

If I can diet down seriously to 176# at (optimistically) 10% body fat, could my planche, levers, and hspu finally go somewhere? What might my new rep ranges look like?

Just wondering If anybody did anything similar. I might get F1 when I'm leaner and less detrained basically.

I'm not as noobish about diet as I was two years ago. Lyle McDs Rapid Fat Loss diet got me into my high school jeans last spring. I'm running a 4 week cycle now.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Doctor_Octopus

[Mikkel Ravn]

1: Don't trust BF% measurements. I'm pretty skinny, and one of those consumer scales recently informed me that I was at 25% BF, which is ridiculous.

2: Shedding fat, gaining muscle, developing skill and strength happens gradually in concert. You can't single out one factor, and hope that manipulating that one will increase your abilities in other areas.

3: It makes no sense putting of F1 until you get in better shape. The whole point of F1 is to improve your conditioning, so if you know that you will start eventually, might as well start now. Otherwise, you'll regret the wasted time later. 

[Oussama KHELLADI]

Hi

for fats, training the right amount and eating 30 grams of proteins approximately in every meal will make an impact on the body composition 

for the training in my experience its better to train with a specific goal for example the (7 foundations) rather than trying to train randomly like i was .

[Fabio Pinna]

BF% measurements, especially the one you can get in an Herbalife premise (ugh) is going to be very badly off. That kind of measurement is heavily influenced by hydration level, for example. Is you can't get a water measurement, go with calipers yourself, it's actually pretty easy.

Leaning down will of course help with many things, but won't make you stronger - you'll simply have less you to lift off the floor. Will help with chinups, but not really with planches, unless you lose leg mass, in which case you'd hinder squat progress greatly.

Best advice is to backstep a bit and go back to previous progressions and easier exercises, and check if you can do things right with proper form. You'll find that in your downtime you have developed quite a few imbalances for sure. Fix these and your strenght will get back up much faster than expected.

[Amon Ra]

You don't have to softball it for me guys. I believe the measurement. I know I'm fat. How many people do you know who are honestly lean and jacked at 206 pounds (94 kg ~ 14st 10lbs)?

I know one guy, personally, but he's a manlet and been running steroid cycles since Clinton was in office.

On that chart of leanness down below I look somewhere between "benchwarming college athlete" and "stay at home dad". 20-22% looks just about right. Walking around shirtless, I don't look anything like a gymnast.

I have tried the "condition into leanness" strategy but since I have no serious muscular base or history of leanness, two years of that NOT working has led me to believe that diet trumps all in terms of getting a newer athlete lean. Sure, top gymnasts might not have to worry about their diet to stay lean, but I'm not a top gymnast.

I was just wondering two things -

1) A ballpark estimate of what my new rep ranges might look like dieted aggressively to 175 lbs.
2) Whether anybody has done something similar (i.e; lost body fat, saw lifts go up).
 

Edit: To be honest I don't care about losing leg muscle, or leg strength at all. The third time I walked into a gym I pulled 315# deadlift for a clean set of five. I could pistol squat the first time I tried. Upper body is where I've lagged since forever.

 

Edited March 4, 2016 by Doctor_Octopus

[Ian Hogg]

My history is very much like yours. Losing bodyfat definitely helps in my experience and even more than I thought it would. As an example I doubled my pull ups from around 6 at a struggle at 14st + when my bf% was similar to yours to 12 at around 12st. Not to mention flexibility increases.

There is a reason you don't get successful fat gymnasts it makes life much harder not just in strength moves but in flexibility like pike fold etc too. 

Try putting on a 30 lb weight vest and moving around or doing pull ups and then see what it feels like when you take it off the difference is huge! If you can lose 2st in bf that's basically the boost you will be getting.

[Amon Ra]

Thanks for the reply Ian Hogg. It makes a lot of sense and confirms a lot of my suspicions. Nobody would say that a guy with a "normal" physique of 20% bodyfat or so is fat, even though by all accounts he absolutely is.

FYI the scale at Herbalife was wrong, I went to an actual doctor's office and found my weight was 213#. Unusual of them to have a broken scale. Must be some kind of marketing trick.

It's finals week and horrible exams are upon me but I've been seriously dieting for about four weeks and have lost about fifteen pounds of bodyfat. I'm down to 196#. I'm taking it easy for another week or so but I plan on being as ripped as possible by August when I'll actually have free time to start training in earnest. I want to be as jacked as Simonster by the time I hit 30.